The real, profound worth of life is revealed when one’s life is dedicated to the well-being of humanity. It thus gains an otherworldly dimension and attains a quality comparable to that of the dwellers of heaven. Centering life around such an ideal renders one’s life many times more fruitful. Those awakened souls experience such a state of rapture that it cannot be contained in a single lifetime. Then they begin to feel this cramped world as if it were but one of the spacious relieving climes of the eternal realms. Such individuals aspire to breathe life into everybody. With every revival they inspire, their hearts overflow with exuberance, as if they too are experiencing a resurrection on the path of being a life for other souls. Saving a single person is akin to saving all of humanity, says the Divine word, and this message constantly rings in the ears of their hearts.

Given that even a single human life in this transient world bears this much importance, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that an endeavor for a worldwide revival is likely to break the scales of good deeds on the Day of Judgment. With a zest for blowing life into others, a champion of revival is ever-conscious of the fact that humanity has been blessed with the best pattern of creation amongst all living creatures. These champions feel that the consciences of those who are spiritually paralyzed resemble a grim autumn scene. They are so compelled by their mission that ceasing it would qualify as a sinful act. They compose melodies of revival from the tongues of their hearts for those in spiritual death throes; they run to help these lost ones, as if running from one intensive care unit to the next.

This exhausting run is nothing to be overstated in their eyes. They spur their free will on toward the horizons of lofty ideals as being truly human necessitates. They serve as guides on this path of idealism for those who do not know the way, blow energy into those weary of walking, and become compasses for the masses who are without navigation. To those who have their backs to the sun and so keep following only their own shadow, they inspire them always to return to the source of light. These people become a support and prop for those who are weak and prone to stumble, and provide guardianship for those who are left crawling in misery from the impact of various calamities. They try to soothe sobs echoing on all sides, share the troubles of the wearied ones, forbear various separations with the resolve to keep company with the needy, and come between the growls of oppressors and groans of the oppressed. They keep running like firemen to extinguish one fire after another. As this sense of revival is preserved deep in their consciences, they strive to fulfill this spiritual endeavor in sincerity and only for Divine approval.

A person with this depth of feeling and thought brings to mind the notion of the “journey from God”; they are in a constant state of metaphysical vigilance. Their groans are their pain at how to bring happiness to others instead of themselves. They seek to effect peace in the hearts of others instead of self-indulging in the pleasures of this world. They view life always from a perspective of the sufferings and joys of others and build torches along the path of those who try to make their way through darkness. Reaching success is dependent on making others succeed; they regard indifference to laments as akin to being a mute devil and see remaining lively as conditional to blowing life into others; walkers on the path of Divine guides are their inheritors.

These actions by champions of revival yield such surprise fruits when the due time comes; they are like a kernel in the soil that flourishes into some 20-30 ears. It gives messages of being modest to hundreds of thousands of people and encourages smiles all around as hundreds of new ones have begun walking as one.

The waves were in such a rush, like all the bustling people in the city.

Maybe if you rush you will get more done: that is their theory.

Ours is: how much we comprehend life.

Life is a gift given to you only once. Peacefully, take your time.

Maybe there is a norm.

Life should be rushed at some points and slowed at other times.

I guess it depends on your perspective of things,

Kind of like a movie “On Demand” when you think about it…

Some people like to watch the whole thing through once.

Others fast forward at some sections.

Some speed up at the scary parts, or the kissing scene.

Sometimes they rewind and analyze what the actor was trying to articulate.

It all depends on your perspective.

Life is one thing for sure though: too precious to waste.

If one wants to accomplish anything in life, he or she first must think.

You may think about why you are here, what the things around you represent, how you got here. You may question life. It’s one of the habitual things we should do.

You sit there, watch the waves rolling in, moving the sand at the beach, look over the horizon, and think…

God it is Who has made the sea to be of service to you by making it subservient (to His command), so that the ships may run through it by His command, and that you may seek of His bounty, and that (in return) you may be thankful. He has also made of service to you whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth; all is from Him (a gift of His Grace). Surely in this there are (clear) signs for a people who think deeply.

(Qur’an 45:12–13)

Ceyda Sablak is a high school senior who has yet many dreams to pursue in the life that waits for her…

‘Between my two wrinkled fingers,

a mess of fading, fretted threads

without particular line or colour

or order or significance: What is it?

(And his feet said.) your memories.

A servant as negligent as he can be

while still clinging to his job.

who answers my simplest needs

with slow, mocking disdain: Who is that?

your body.

Long-winded phrases that flap

aimlessly around my head

at home or in my office till (at last)

they find an open window and jump out:

What are these?

Your passions, loves or hates.

A dozen or so strangers who visit

if and only if I’ m very ill,

lay hypocritical hands on my forehead,

feeling my temperature and

their inheritance, then leave

holding their noses.’ Who are they?

your near relatives.

A narrow rectangular edifice

sinking on shallow foundations

designed to that servant’s specification,

open to any scavenging maggot or worm

that happens by: What is that?

The neat sum, the very grand total

of a lifetime’s shrewd, successful

property management – your grave.

The old man huddled his face in his hands, crumpled up like a lost or abandoned child. He heard his wife calling him once again, and complaining that his breakfast was getting cold. But he sat silent, listening to thoughts that voiced themselves inside his head or heart, from far off, as if from another life, a time long gone. And now and again his feet would answer those thoughts, taunting him: 

Before at last the great trumpet sounds

and sounds again,’ before its mighty echo

converts to an irresistible hail that blasts

open each anguished grave: before the hour

when every individual cell, howsoever

dispersed or decomposed. shall by Decree

be re-joined to every other individual cell.

down to the re-perfecting of a fingerprint:

before that hour, may be long before.

you shall hear the angels’ interrogations

howl in your marrowless, hollowed bones:

what is your religion and your worth?

Run, old man, run!

Where will you run?

Who came with clear warnings, reiterated,

and truth you recognized? Offered forgiveness

and you preferred your sins? Pointed you

to eternal light and you ran in to darkness?

Whose teaching called you the many times

you turned

away to make a killing in the market-place,

or to play hide and seek with your intentions.

promising to be virtuous after you were

wealthy?

or shame you dare not name him, still less

claim a corner/n his protecting shade!

Run, old man, ran!

Where will you run?

The order of things is not as it was.

There, in this life, your heart knew

it’s deepest need for forgiveness.

and you couldn’t careless. Here too,

your heart knows it’s deepest need,

but here the order is truth and justice.

A command joins every conscience 

to every sin, forgotten in this life or

remembered, slight or significant.

the whole chain of it’s circumstance.

antecedent or consequent, actual or

potential. Here your closest secrets

are opened. elaborated, pronounced out loud!

old man, old man!

those you betrayed know it now:

those you robbed know it now:

those you could have helped

but did not help, they are here

staring in your face! Where now,

Where will you run?

Here no hiding or seeking, no turning

aside from the Command: your limbs.

Eyes, ears, tongue, heart, brain, each

obedient, each omniscient tells all

it enacted or endured. Self-accused.

self-condemned, you sit whimpering

like a kitten trapped in traffic ,lost.

desolate, in a pool of shame smelling

worse than your own excrement!

Stinking, stupid feet! Why did you

lead me astray?’ Stinking, stupid man.

we obeyed your every command!

Run, then, if you can, run!

And do you remember the kitten?

Remember the blind man at the roadside

who, gesturing wildly with his stick,

made you stop your important car.

delayed your important appointment

You got out shouting at the blind man.

He only pointed down and said:

I can hear but cannot see to help

the poor thing, it’s hurt. You do it.’

Only then you saw the kitten, it’s tail

broken, it’s nerves shattered by the noise

of passing cars, trembling dreadfully.

covered in the dust of the road.

Do not deny that you considered

carrying the little thing to safety.

Do not deny that you knew what to do.

You knew. But wouldn’t dirty your hands

on it’s dusty fur, not before a business

appointment .So you drove round it

fast leaving the kitten in it’s little agony

and the blind man in confusion.

Run, old man run!

But you have nowhere to run!

The man took his hands from his face

and stared at his feet and said: ‘I will run

to the forgiveness of my Lord. There is no

sin so great that it is greater than His

mercy’. His feet did not reply. Then, much to

his surprise, the old man saw bed and bed

ding disappear from beneath his feet Two

shackles of massive iron rose up and locked

upon each of his ankles: from the shackles

enormous chains, likewise made of massive

iron, descended into a bottomless dark

ness. But the man kept his wits about him

and said in his heart atubu ilayk,

Allahumma, atubu ilayk. The chains fell

away and the darkness closed up. Only the

shackles remained and their weight was

such that the man could not move his legs.

let alone his feet. So he repeated what he

had said in his heart, ever more earnestly.

until the shackles opened. He could now

move his feet but dared not waiting for the

shackles to disappear as the chains had.

But they remained open upon his bed. his

ankles resting in them. Indeed, no matter

how often he urged the words of repen

tance, the shackles remained. So he accepted

them as they were, to serve as a

reminder of the jaws of death.

He heard his wife call him a third time to

come down for breakfast. He got up from bed

briskly and went to wash himself. Not in

preparation for work but, for the first time since (so

long ago, alas) his father had given him a choice

in the matter, in preparation for

prayer.

When a honeybee discovers a new source of honey within about ten metres of the hive, she returns to the hive and regurgitates drops of honey which are eagerly drunk by other bees. Then, in order to indicate the source of the drops they have just drunk, she performs an interesting sequence of movements we call the ‘round dance’. She dances round in a circle, first in one direction, then reversing and going round in the opposite direction, again reversing and so on. During the performance, other bees follow her about, holding their antenna against her abdomen. After the dance, she flies back to the food source, normally a particular flower or group of flowers. The other bees who followed the dance do not fly after her but fly out in all directions. However, fairly soon, a great number of them find the new source. They do so because they have smelt the scent of the flowers that clung to the dancer’s body and so to recognize the right kind of flower. Observing this procedure of the bees’ communication with admiration, Frisch reported that the ‘round dance’ tells the other bees to go out and search in the near neighbourhood of the hive; and the scent on the dancer’s body tells them which flowers to look for. In one experiment, bees informed by a dancer at once found the right flowers in a section of Munich Botanical Gardens where 700 different plant species were blooming.

But honeybees search for food at a greater distance than 10 metres. They have been observed to fly more than 13 km in search of honey. Remembering the average that a honeybee is only about 13 mm long, that 13 km for a bee is the equivalent of about 1,600 km for a human being. It is clear that, even for distances considerably less than 13 km, the round dance would not be much use. If the discoverer of a new food source informed the other bees to go out and search in all directions for over several kilometres, they would never find the flowers. Thus, when a bee finds food at a considerable distance, say over 100 metres from the hive, she returns to the hive, offers the honey she has found, and then performs a different kind of special dance. She dances along in a straight line for a certain distance, wagging her tail vigorously and buzzing away by means of slight vibrations of the muscles that flap her wings in flight. At the end of this wagging run, she stops buzzing and wagging her tail, circles round to one side back to where she started, does another wagging run, circles round to the opposite side, does a third wagging run and so on. This sequence of movements is called ‘tail-wagging dance’. Showing special interest in wagging runs, a number of other bees follow her round. It is known that bees cannot hear sounds in the air, however they can feel the buzzing vibrations through the surface on which the dance is performed. Like the round dance the ‘tail-wagging’ dance tells the followers of the dance that there is food available, and what flowers to look for, from the smell. But it tells them much more than this; it tells them precisely how far away the flowers are, and in exactly what direction. And so, the bees who study the dance can fly with precision to the spot indicated, even at a distance of kilometers, and find the honey-bearing flowers.

The distance to the food is conveyed by the tempo of the dance. A quick-step tempo means a relatively nearby food source, a slow tempo means a more distant one. More precisely as the distance increases, so does the duration of each wagging run. The bees who follow the dance study several wagging runs and then appear to calculate the average duration which they then translate into distance by a mathematical rule.

The ‘tail-wagging dance’ is sometimes done on a horizontal surface just outside the hive. When this happens, the dancer indicates the direction of food by aiming her run in exactly the direction of the food. She can do this if she can see the sun (or the polarized light of the blue sky, which indicates the position of the sun to bees, though not to us). So, actually she is taking up a position in which she sees the sun as the same angle as during her flight to the honey source. The wagging run makes the same angle with the sun on her outward flight did. But the dance is normally performed in the dark inside the hive, on the vertical surface of the honeycomb. Here the angle between the flight path and the sun is translated into the angle between the wagging run and the vertical direction straight upwards.

Another remarkable fact about the bees communication is that if the bee reached her goal (and returned from it) by an L-shaped detour, she uses the angles and lengths of the two sections of flight to calculate the true direction of the goal by straight-line flight, and this is the direction she conveys in her dance, even when she did not this direct route herself.

As for the bees who are following the dance, they are working literally in the dark and can only use touch to find out the angle of the dancer’s wagging run against the vertical. They translate this back into a visual angle with the sun, fly off in this direction for the distance signaled by the wagging run tempo, and look for the flowers of the scent they smelt on the dancer.

So far we have described the language of the Carniolan race of honeybees according to the findings of Frisch. Other races have different ‘dialects’. German, North African, Caucasian, Italian honeybees all indicate distance and direction by much shorter dances than the Carniolans. How the honeybees have learned to communicate with each other is certainly remarkable! However, it is not a true language, because the system used by bees, unlike human languages, cannot generate new combination of structures and symbols to describe novel events. One example of their limitation is that bees appear to have no way of communicating height or depth beyond a few meters. Thus, if you take a bee to a source of food in a place, say 10 metres above ground level, she will return to her hive and try to indicate the food source by means of her dance. Then, the other bees will all fly out in the direction she indicated, but they will never find the source. No matter how near the source is, even if it is just above the hive, the result will be the same.